Lahar, a Javanese word for mudflow, entered the vocabulary and consciousness of Filipinos only in 1991, soon after the eruption of Mount Pinatubo. Geologists appropriated the term and have been using it since the early 1900s to refer, not to mudflow, but, in the words of Dr. Kelvin Rodolfo, to “rapidly flowing mixtures of rock … Read more

From the many that are mass-distributed and forwarded via the Internet, one e-mail landed in my inbox which referred to the torrential rains that fell on much of western Luzon and the Visayas in the past few days as God’s way of telling us that we are making a horrible mistake in pushing for the … Read more

A lot of people may have all the money in the world, and still feel they don’t have enough. Every asset they acquire serves as a prod to gain more. They become slaves to their possessions. Others have very much less in comparison, and yet they think it’s more than what they need. Their wants … Read more

Responding to the question I raised in this column the other day—whether Ateneo de Manila University can call itself Catholic and, at the same time, invoke academic freedom—a reader sent me an Internet link to the webpage of Neumann University (http://www.neumann.edu/mission/identity/franciscantradition.asp). This school in Pennsylvania describes itself as “a Catholic university in the Franciscan tradition.” … Read more

As Congress prepares to vote on the controversial Reproductive Health bill, all eyes are focused on the bishops of the Catholic Church. They have done everything to thwart the passage of the bill, including intense person-to-person lobbying for every legislator’s vote. There is no surprise there: the Church has taken a strong position against artificial … Read more

Over the past week, thousands of motorcycle riders throughout the country descended on the offices of the Department of Trade and Industry seeking a small sticker for their helmets. Like recruits for a ragtag army waiting to have their weapons inspected before marching to war, they waited for harried DTI personnel to paste an ICC … Read more

While visiting Singapore last week to attend the 80th birthday celebration of a dear friend, the architect and urbanist William Lim, I wondered what it was that a traveler would find most beguiling in a small city-state like this. I started to count Singapore’s ways: its orderliness, its predictability, its cleanliness, the all-round safety it … Read more

Two years after he became President, it is perhaps easier to define the core values to which Benigno S. Aquino III subscribes than to formulate the vision that orients the direction of his administration. The commitment to ethical governance is felt everywhere, permeating the exercise of executive power, but the general program that the government … Read more

A group of Filipinos based in the United States, convened by prominent business leader Loida Nicolas-Lewis and lawyer Ted Laguatan, has called for a boycott of China-made products as a way of protesting China’s bullying behavior in the disputed waters of the West Philippine Sea (South China Sea). They are not talking of a government-supported … Read more

For the first time in its 45-year history, the Association of South East Asian Nations failed to issue a joint communiqué at the end of its annual conference. This self-imposed muteness merely confirms what the Philippines has long suspected: that Asean members will do nothing to disturb the beneficial economic relationship they each enjoy with … Read more